The Birth of Venus: A Novel

Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family's Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter's abilities.

Secret of the Seventh Son

Nine people have been slain in New York City, nine strangers with nothing in common - the apparent victims of a frighteningly elusive serial killer. Only one thing links the dead: postcards they received, mailed from Las Vegas, announcing the day they would die.

The Passage: The Passage Trilogy, Book 1

First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.

This starts off with a full set of characters, with whom great pains are taken to establish motivation, personality, etc. About 25% into it, you begin wondering why the author devoted so much time & effort on them.

Similar questions arise throughout..almost seems as though the author was short on plot, so just kept churning out incidental characters.

So much about this book is drawn out & filled with tedious detail. And then, an abrupt, random ending.

That being said, there were some intriguing stretches where I became involved. Not awful, but disjointed & ultimately unsatisfying.

Straight Man

Russo's protagonist is William Henry Devereaux, Jr., the reluctant chairman of the English department of a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on local television.

Under the Dome: A Novel

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener's hand is severed as "the dome" comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when - or if - it will go away.

Why we think it’s a great listen: The most celebrated performance in all of Audible’s history, The Help has nearly 2,000 5-star reviews from your fellow listeners. We hear the print book’s not bad, either. In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women - mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends - view one another.

The Lost Symbol

Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to deliver an evening lecture in the U.S. Capitol. Within minutes of his arrival, the night takes a bizarre turn. A disturbing object is discovered in the Capitol Building. The object is an ancient invitation, meant to usher its recipient into a long-lost world of hidden esoteric wisdom. And when Langdon's mentor is kidnapped, Langdon's only hope of saving him is to accept this invitation and follow wherever it leads him.

Frankenstein, Book Three: Dead and Alive

As a devastating hurricane approaches, as the benighted creations of Victor Helios begin to spin out of control, as New Orleans descends into chaos and the future of humanity hangs in the balance, the only hope rests with Victor's first, failed attempt to build the perfect human. Deucalion's centuries-old history began as the original manifestation of a soulless vision and it is fated to end in the ultimate confrontation between a damned creature and his mad creator.

Wow, Koontz ran out of steam on this one! Seems like he was obligated to write the third & final installment to this series, and with great reluctance and absolutely no thought threw this together. Or maybe he just needs a co-author to produce something worthwhile. Don't bother.

Cathedral of the Sea

At last: The international best seller - which has already sold nearly 2 million copies worldwide - comes to America! Cathedral of the Sea follows the fortunes of the Estanyol family, from their peasant roots to a son, Arnau, who flees the land only to realize spectacular wealth and devastating problems.

Rambling, plodding writing & shallow characters, with little bits of historical trivia thrown in here and there. Ambitious effort, but it never succeeds in creating an interesting or believable storyline. In short, tedious.

The Strain

The visionary creator of the Academy Award-winning Pan's Labyrinth and a Hammett Award-winning author bring their imaginations to this bold, epic novel about a horrifying battle between man and vampire that threatens all humanity. It is the first installment in a thrilling trilogy and an extraordinary international publishing event.

Started strong, with a fresh & intriguing slant on vampires. Unfortunately, once the groundwork was laid, no story followed. Just degenerated into good guys chasing bad guys, and good guys chasing bad guys, and .......

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